Yesterday while quietly mooching around at home my OH suddenly heard a chopper – landing right next door!

We hot-footed it up there and found the SES & RFS pilot conferring on the best spot to return with a load of sandbags.  Later that afternoon they came back and I captured this shot  of them delivering sandbags for the Banora Point SES Centre.

While  delighted to be included on the front page gallery and in the article, a proper credit would have been nice.  They did give me full credit in the photo gallery – a small consolation I guess.

A couple of other shots from the day below

The RFS Chopper takes off through the goal posts in heavy rain on the first run

Sandbag delivery

Original image of the NSW RFS chopper delivering sandbags

It has been absolutely pouring all week.  We had a brief respite yesterday, but it is bucketing down again.  Our rain so far for the week to 9am yesterday for the 3 days was 272.5 – we’ll be reading it soon. And it is still coming.

Updated: 24 hours to 9am Friday 27 Jan 2012 – 49mm  Weeks’s total to 9am – 311.5

We went out Wednesday morning and got the 9kg gas bottle filled in case of power outages, and stocked up with groceries, to make sure we had enough cat food, veges etc. All the roads we used were closed by 1pm!

I sent seven pics from out morning excursion, including the one above, to the Tweed News and they are in their photo gallery from the floods. The #10-16 are mine – has my name at the top.

The ABC website also used this image.

And the Sydney Morning Herald website slideshow has used them too.  Nice to get a bit of coverage!

So here is my effort for Week One – Mischievous Marmie

When it is time to prepare the dinner at our house, the 6 cats go a bit ballistic. This is our elder statesman, Marmaduke the Marmalade Cat (Marmie for short) under a footstool in the dining room in the middle of a play with Master Yoda.

We usually intervene to keep these two apart as Marmie lost all his teeth to gingivitis a few years ago and Yoda is inclined to play hard and bite, but they were enjoying themselves so much last night I just kept an eye on them.

You can see where Yoda is next going to attack from by marmie’s eye position!

Lumix FZ35

If you have recently purchased a Tamron lens you could win a trip to Africa!

I have been going out every morning trying to capture this comet and finally we had a cloudless eastern sky! A bit fainter than I would like, but the H2 does not handle low ISOs well, and the only usable shots are from the Lumix.

26 Dec 2011; 0442, Terranora looking east, NSW far north coast, Australia Lumix FZ35, f2.8, 30 secs, ISO 200 (P1080495)

Tomorrow I will try from somewhere down nearer the water.  There is a spot on the Tweed River outlet opposite the end of Dry Dock Rd where I think the comet and southern cross might be reflected in the water, I won’t know until I get there in the morning.  If that doesn’t work I’ll go to Snapper Rocks and shoot over the ocean.  If any of the togs I was speaking to today would like to join me, love to see you.  You can tell where I am by looking for the big yellow Kia Pregio van!

My annual effort at ‘Photoshop art’ placing images of all our cats into a Christmas scene.  And the Santa is my partner Warwick when he ‘did’ Santa in 1984 at Coffs harbour’s Park Plaza – it entailed a lot of layering to get this right!

The preview below shows the whole book – every 4th page spread has a photo, the other pages are just lined.

Tasmanian Temptations by a blank notebook | Make Your Own Book

Browse through all the calendar images and order online at my RedBubble store.  Postage discounts apply to multiple items – the more you order the cheaper per item postage becomes.

On Sunday 30 October 2011 two RedBubble friends, Brett & Greg, showed me some of the Oast Houses in the Derwent Valley. We visisted a couple of commonly known ones first, Valleyfield and this one, Shooter’s Kiln at Shooters Hill west of Hayes on the Lyell Hwy. [

This shot was taken a few days later when I decided to revisit this one and try from a different spot a bit further up the road – you can see it is a more head on angle than my earlier colour shot.

I found a very interesting history of the Derwent Valley Oasthouses by John Redecker online at www.johnredekercards.com/our-oast-houses-story-and-photos…

H2 | P20 | HC 210mm

Catafalque party, Remembrance Day, Murwillumbah, NSW 2010

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine,
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!